


Time and Season

by Zeryx



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-16
Updated: 2015-08-16
Packaged: 2018-04-15 02:44:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4590060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zeryx/pseuds/Zeryx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A meditation on Castiel and Dean's friendship juxtaposed by the changing of seasons.<br/>(Takes place between S5E22 and S6E01)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Time and Season

**Author's Note:**

> As always, special thanks to my beta reader [Hit_The_Books](http://archiveofourown.org/users/hit_the_books). Special thanks to [Wattlebird](http://archiveofourown.org/users/wattlebird) for canon-checking for me!

  _Summer:_ honeysuckle has appeared high in the trees, fat yellow fingers groping towards the earth as the smell of burnt leaves fills the air. Dean is pushing a lawnmower, seemingly in a zen-like trance as he harnesses a blade spun not by his own hand and not meant to injure. It is a peaceful day, clouds dotting the heavens in squares like cracked worn pebbled asphalt. It is a sky like the beach at high tide on the cusp between backward and forward momentum on the fulcrum of the moon.

  Cicadas are singing in the distance. Castiel removes his footwear and feels the press of grass between his vessel's toes, the crushed mat comprised of many individual blades beneath his feet.  
It is many months before he will stand in a heaven of burnt-out wings, angels mown down by his own hand.

 Dean guides the lawnmower, twists his body as he corners with it, hands steady and sure on the black bar. He keeps pushing, and Castiel, former wind-up soldier of God, does not know the way forward.

 Soon will come Autumn and the onslaught of things dead and rotten, as summer lies long forgotten.

 

****

 

 _Spring:_ green tender shoots as raw and fragile as their new equilibrium.

 The scent of mildew is heavy in the air, nearly overpowering the rapid release of ozone and chlorophyll—the scent of new things growing—the thirsty earth stretching back to the heavens in a cry for life. It has been a year since a late spring day where Castiel and Dean had bonded over absent fathers.

 Castiel observes Dean drinking a beer in the gathering dusk; brown glass comprised of thousands of grains of sand fused to the purpose of being a vessel. How fragile a soul; more fragile still its container. It is many years before Castiel finds the remnant of his grace in a vial—at the end of a trail of rhetoric that states suicide is the maddest thing a man can do.

 Dean's eyes are heavily shadowed with fatigue as he sits alone with his thoughts. Lisa has already gone to bed and his mask is no longer in place. Castiel stands beside him, one hand on the back of the lawn chair his friend slouches forward in. He watches as he has always watched; both alone yet together in tears and solitude. A light sprinkle of rain patters down; Dean curses under his breath but does not move. He fails to notice that while the rain is falling, he is near dry under the canopy of Castiel's outstretched wing; a banner unfurled in solidarity shouting defiance of the heavens.

 

 ***

 

 _Winter:_ Dean is shoveling his truck out from the flash dump of snow that occurred overnight—a couple inches of pure white overlaying a layer of dirty grey slush. Soft, easy to remove. The white and grey swirl together; melt and run over Dean's fingers. The run-off pauses and is lost as it saturates the cuff of his jacket.

  Fat wet snowflakes eddy gently around the two friends, each lost in solemn contemplation of their tasks. Dean is red in the face with exertion, Castiel is a pale bloodless white. The morning ground fog of dreary late winter cocoons them; five seasons prior, Castiel had admitted to the blurring of his resolve.

  The sun rises higher in the sky and the snow turns to drizzle. It is years before the angels fall in  streaks of blazing light from Heaven.

 

***

 

  _Fall:_ the scent of burned leaves persists. Crowley's arrival barely registers amidst the smoky scent of the earth returning to slumber for another year.

 Dean clutches a fistful of leaves; some dry and brittle, others half-way rotted to mulch. Dead organisms and living ones, frantic beetles and bacteria hidden in a riot of colour. The fine tracery of veins reaching ever outward towards the warmth of the sun is lost in a dark void. Now is the time when everything begins to unravel.

 Castiel looks away.

 

 

 


End file.
